Live minnows, a widely used fish bait, are usually transported to a fishing location in some type of water-containing minnow buckets. To properly bait a fishhook with a minnow, it is necessary to first remove the minnow from the water with some sort of dipping device, orient the minnow in the direction to conveniently pass the barbed end of the fishhook transversely through the minnow, and then remove the baited hook from the dipping device.
A problem common to all open-top minnow dippers is that of confining the dipped minnow so that it cannot flounce out of the dipper before it can be impaled on a fishook. Certain opentop minnow dippers are sufficiently deep to preclude self-ejection of the minnow, such dippers requiring long-handled tongs for reaching and holding the minnow.
Other previously described open-top dippers are constructed as a combination having an embodied tongs or other minnow-clasping members, such constructions are useful in the baiting of the hook, but only after the minnow has in some way been restrained from flopping out of the dipper.